The University's «Scorecard»: Keeping Tabs on Vision 2010 Targets

Hélène Carrière and Jean-Marc Barrette

The fourth edition of the University of Ottawa's Scorecard shows that four of our targets for 2010 have already been reached and that we've made headway on 12 others.  

Financial aid ranks among the top areas of progress: the University had aimed for an average of $2,400 per student by 2010, but the amount had already climbed to almost $2,500 in 2006-07. According to University registrar Éric Bercier, a concerted effort by the government, the University itself and its donors is what sparked the swift increase despite swelling student numbers.

Research intensity also posted impressive gains, with yearly research-funding per professor amounting to nearly $239,200 and allowing the University to maintain its fifth-place standing across Canada, compared with ninth place in 2003-04.

In some areas, the University has even managed to reverse nagging trends; take student-professor ratios, for instance: after three straight years of "inflation," the numbers actually dropped from 23.2 in 2006-07 to 22.3 in 2007-08, again despite hefty increases in the student population. "With massive investments in faculty hirings, we've been able to improve our student-professor ratios, and that's critically important because the primary factors affecting the quality of the student experience are the professors and their availability to meet with students, says Robert Major, vice-president, academic and provost.

Still, the picture isn't all rosy. Two areas for improvement continue to raise concerns: linguistic balance (especially in terms of the number of Francophone students) and study space, which haven't progressed as we had hoped. Intensive recruitment efforts aimed at Francophone communities and the five-year $150 million facilities-improvement plan should get things moving in these two areas.

Overall, the annual Scorecard measures the actual impact of the initiatives launched under Vision 2010 and shows our progress to date. "Fully half of our performance targets involve the quality of the student experience—proof that we're truly committed to putting students at the very core of our educational mission and, with that in mind, to forging ahead on all fronts," says uOttawa president Allan Rock.